Considering that more and more offices nowadays gave up cables and wires in favor of wireless devices, Netgear noticed the need for increased security in an office like that and introduces the SRXN3205.
Netgear released the ProSafe Wireless-N VPN Firewall (SRXN3205) – the first product to combine dualband Wireless-N with SSL and IPsec VPN. With this dual option, unmatched by competing security solutions for SMBs, the firewall provides 25-user offices with optimal, secure remote connections to their wireless networks. In addition to VPN flexibility, the SRXN3205 supports businesses transitioning from legacy networks to draft 802.11n networks.
The SRXN3205 Wireless-N VPN Firewall supports up to five SSL VPN tunnels and five IPsec VPN tunnels simultaneously for enhanced protection from network security threats. SSL VPN tunnels enable clientless, individual remote access to corporate data, anytime and anywhere - without needing to install a software client. (www.netgear.com)
via Josh Lowensohn at CNET I found out this morning that YouTube is quietly rolling out the High Definition option for their videos Long expected, and finally here, it’s not “public”yet, but this can be achieved with a simple URL hack by adding the “&fmt=22” string to the end of the video URL string.
Meghan Keane from WIRED also speaks about the soon to be available option of downloading videos as mp4, and of course this will be available for non copyrighted material I suppose, but who knows? another day, another hack!
More and more people ask me for tips and tricks to improve their WiFi setup in their homes. People that recently moved in a new flat and want good coverage all over the place, which includes the living area, sleep quarters, kitchen or even bathroom, and people that just built a new 3 story house or the likes of it.
The first mistake that everyone makes is to place the router exactly where the internet connection enters the house, and that’s usually one of the corners where flats are concerned, or the basement for multistory buildings. Almost any decent WiFi router on the market today can cover an 80 to 100 square meters flat, so I won’t go into much depth on that situation, but when large houses are concerned, you need to have in mind that the best place to position your WiFi router is at the center of the structure. So, if you have a basement, ground floor, and 1st floor, you would be better off placing the device on the ground floor instead of the basement, where the internet connection is made available by the ISP. This way, you will get good coverage on the ground floor, and the adjacent floors, without the need to scale the network up to more than one router. If you have your office in the basement and your rest room on the 1st floor, it would be probably a good idea to have two separate access points and use an Ethernet connection between them. However, placing your only router in the basement is never a good idea, and should not be tried. The easiest way to test everything is to plug in a router with no WAN connectivity and walk around the house with your laptop to see where the weak points in the WiFi network are.
Feel free to post comments about your setup, or your needs based on your new home, and remember Wireless Is Fun to play with and it’s darn useful to have all over your property! Garden included ;-)
About a year ago I used to tinker with RF, exploring ways to make it more ubiquitous, friendly, widespread and easy to use. Great material for WiF:)
I’ve slowed down.
Either wireless tech got so much of the above or I’m just comfortable with my setup.
I still have a whole closet of c*frees Merakis, Foneras, Airports, Linksys, Asus and 3G all-in-one-office boxes and various antennas, mostly WiFi tech. But I only employ a simple Airport Express ‘n with AirTunes.
Somehow it all worked out and the iPhone with its GPRS/EDGE/3G+ took over my connectivity white space.
All this is not to say that my wireless saga is over. It’s more like a new chapter. A bump up in usability and solutions that just work got me closer to connectivity nirvana, having to seek more enjoyable experiences than raw hardware solutions.
Frankly I don’t even know or care what firmwares my routers have installed. I just plug them cables or modems in and there, we have a nice working wireless link.
But all that tech in my closet is probably waiting to be employed. I suppose I could WiFi my whole neighborhood with them.
Listen! Maybe you have an idea on how to mix such a multi-skilled equipment in an ingenuous wireless project. I’ll do it!
Sound it off in the comments.
Actually, surprisingly well! Three days after launch and moderate pickup among local community and friends, Apple features it on its web apps page and iSpeed.info quickly becomes 4th “Most Popular” app and leader in its category, with a peak exactly a week after its launch.
Weekends are clearly a mark of slowdown. But nothing compares to an Apple event that brings new goodies like the recent one around the iPod.
Its attention captivated Apple website squatters, slashing the numbers by nearly 20%. It’s interesting to see if the numbers will go back up in the next few days.
An update with bug fixes and improved results was sent for review to Apple a few days ago. Curious to see how that fares.
All in all, iSpeed is doing great, having served more than 21K unique iPhone speed tests in just a week.
I had no attempt to monetize iSpeed.info at least yet!
Left the biggest GSM carrier in the world - Vodafone - less than a month ago and slowly going back to blogging.
Currently in the limited 50-user beta of Things for iPhone, CulturedCode’s neat GTD application that in this version can sync wirelessly.
So I got it! Typing on it as we speak. Dim brightness on the LED display and keyboard and all, fancy aluminum body and very very slender case. I’m electric! Have bought this sadness-bringing-geek-dream-machine when still unreleased in Romania and only a handful of my very fancy, style driven, fellow entrepreneurs have got it.
Owning it is easy. You just can’t understand why everyone doesn’t have one! And when you do, this mixed feeling of discomfort and exclusivity take over, as you know you have the best machine the guys at Cupertino now have to offer.
Inevitably “what next?” comes along.
The Air has proven many a time more that I need no Pro line computer. I need no fancy graphics card, no terabyte hard drive, no yada yada. I simply need my .Mac account to sync my bookmarks, keychain, Mail accounts and address book, beloved Twitterrific & Y! IM to just go ahead and start using my new Mac.
Music, movies (few) and other docs to go with I can always transfer over the tubes from my always-on Mac Mini at home.
The Air is the ultimate wireless device and so much fun. I happen to have Apple’s wireless Mighty Mouse, a fancy Sonyericsson Bluetooth headset and all the WiFi in the world + a HSUPA 3G modem. The rest is bliss and really, if your job is somewhat related to the web, if you don’t play Solitaire and don’t use a computer for spreadsheets, the Air fills in that gap. Most of my data is in the cloud, my get paid for online marketing and I’m a fancy roamer. And I got the cash too.
Fuck that white Macbook and ‘no thank you’ to the Pro line. I’m a sucker for the Air concept and I feel like I fit Apple’s initial bill like a glove. I do. And if your usage profile looks somewhat like mine, stop craving and go get one!
There’s a market niche for this machine and I’m happy to just say it: I’m one of those guys!
You know what? I haven’t laughed as much in a long long time. And not so much about the video Gizmodo shot while they were ruthlessly killing CES LCDs and plasmas one by one, but the comment exchange I later found on the TV-B-Gone product page! [Later edit: removed since, but in full glory in screenshot below]
Enjoy:
We all know airplane regulations about the use of electronic devices on board of an aircraft, don’t we?
Not only is there a total ban on any mobile phone use, but using a damn Tetris game is also a big no-no!
Yet here’s an interesting find on board of a Czech Airlines Airbus 321 aircraft flying from Bucharest to Prague:
(a picture is worth a thousand words, as usual)
Till this I was still counting pros and cons on the new Macbook Air. But now there’s no doubt, I’m getting both! With the AirMail manila sleeve Air feels complete and personal! It feels right!
Will order the Manila folder notebook sleeve for Macbook Air to make sure I’ll have the actual reason to buy the machine.
Handmade out of durable upholstery-grade vinyl, and lined with fuzzy, soft fleece, AirMail sleeves have the same dimensions as standard interoffice manila envelopes.
Congratulate Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, “two Apple geeks with combined handicraft-and-idea-person superpowers”, for coming up with this neat idea! They’ve earned it! (Jona, Claire: don’t fuck up!)
IPTV is supposed to be the next broadcast solution and replace traditional television program delivery. The concept behind IPTV is to deliver TV programs over the Internet. Watching YouTube clips in your browser is not IPTV. Take a look at VoIP (Voice over IP). When you say VoIP you may think Skype, but look further at businesses and you will find that users just pick up that business-looking black and silver handset, answer, or dial a number even if they use VoIP. My point here is that user habits must not be changed, so even if the technology behind the handset is new and more cost-efficient, you still use something that can be called a phone.The same thing should happen with IPTV. Subscribers may receive the signal through their broadband connection instead of the traditional antenna or the TV cable (analog or digital), but besides that, they will want to use their old TVs or new LCD TVs and plasma TVs to watch TV, not run a “Watch TV” application running on their computer.
So far some content providers are delivering a few solutions. Take Joost for example. It’s a great application from the founders of Skype that delivers TV shows via an application. A great selection of shows is available for every taste, it even works perfectly with my HP Pavillion dv1000 laptop’s remote, so I can “watch Joost” just like watching TV. But still, when I purchased my laptop, watching TV was not on the list of requirements and that’s because I and most buyers already own a TV set for that purpose.
Another solution is Apple TV, which lets you easily watch the video content from your computer on your TV screen. The solution is well done, but still, you have to go through your PC to watch content on your TV.
The last one I mention is a Romanian service I came across yesterday called i-tv that offers the same channel list that most cable TV providers on your computer for a monthly fee comparable to that of conventional cable TV providers.
While all these are good solutions, none of them let me plug in a cable into back of the TV set and watch content without a PC in the home.
Expect an IPTV offer from any of your mobile phone, fixed phone, cable TV or your Internet provider in the years to come!
A few minutes ago, Lorand Minyo uploaded Steve Jobs’ keynote from MacWorld 2008.
I can’t write more right about now as I am extremely anxious to watch it myself, so for all of you who did not see it yet, you can do it here: Macworld 2008 Keynote Address (high quality)
Actionec has released the official information on the zControl since my previous post.
Actiontec’s product interconnects any devices that use the Z-Wave protocol such as Motion Sensors, Cameras, Doors, Thermostats, Blinds etc. Z-Wave operates at 900Mhz with a range of 30 m and a bandwidth of up to 40Kbits/s. Although the through output may seem small, it is more that enough to send and receive status information and issue commands.
Interaction with the zControl is done via its a Web-based interface and may be accessed virtually from anywhere (assuming you have an Internet connection in your home and your router/gateway is properly configured to access the zControl remotely). Discovery of your Z-Wave enabled devices can be either automatic or a configuration wizard can be used for that purpose.
Now I’m looking forward to a review of the zControl in a real-life environment. I’ll keep you posted if I find anything. Until then, enjoy these two demos: Z-Wave World and Z-Wave.com.
Njoy your day!
I have just learned about Actiontec reading an article on PCMag.com. Apparently this company is one step ahead of the competition focusing its product on solutions, not as much as just devices. Their product descriptions feature words like “IPTV” and “triple play”. I will cover IPTV and triple/quad-play in a later post.
As pointed out by Tim Bajarin, PCMag.com columnist, Actiontec’s zControl has won one of the 2008 International CES Innovations Design and Engineering Awards. The product is supposed to bring together many of the devices and gadgets in your home. Even if you’re not a big gadget freak, you might want to count the remotes in your home or phones and you will immediatly understand the need for one central control solution for your appliances and electronics in your home.
The zControl will be officially unveiled at the 2008 CES (Consumer Electronics Show), and no details are yet released. I’m looking forward to information to come on the solution.
I’ve been doing some research on what’s on the market in the area of home automation systems, my disertation thesis is “Multi agent System for Control and Monitoring an Intelligent Home”, so expect to read other interesting stuff I may come across.
Today I rediscovered my Apple remote and although it’s based on shitty IR technology (will never grasp why they didn’t use the darn iSight as a sensor) I have to credit it as the coolest and most desirable wireless gadget in my geekdom.
Entertainment is 90% of my working time so you bet this little bugger fills in a lot!
And yeah, since we got here, I’m contemplating getting a Mac Mini (till they go extinct), a Nintendo Wii and a classic Apple iSight (for my Apple collection) for X-Mass.
I’m totally not sure which if not all at once. I’ll be much obliged if you had some ideas here.
I was talking about this with friends months ago, and finally someone did it. Who? Yahoo!
JetBlue is the first domestic carrier to test high altitude connectivity. You can bring your WiFi enabled gadgets, your BlackBerry’s and start browsing the web. IM on Yahoo! post twits on Twitter or whatever you want. It’s an Airbus A320 and it’s called BetaBlue as presented on JetBlue’s website, and the services are free to customers and provided exclusively by JetBlue and LiveTV™, Yahoo!®, and BlackBerry®.
Yahoo! went another step and even added special Status messages like “Head in the clouds - seriously”, “Sleeping on the Plane” and “Ugh! Crying baby on flight”
I have been predicting this a while ago, and now that it’s here, I just want to say “kudos” to everyone involved, and nice winds for the pilots.
Otherwise the cabin will be filled with flying gadgets ;-)
This is why Wireless is FUN, and this is why I’m sorry I stopped writing here lately. I just hope I will have enough time to start writing again and bring you nice and fresh Wireless news, gossips and maybe not only wireless…
Feed yourself!
Considering that more and more offices nowadays gave up cables and wires in favor of wireless devices, Netgear noticed the need for increased security in an office like that and introduces the SRXN3205.
No Comments »
via 
Today I rediscovered my Apple remote and although it’s based on shitty IR technology (will never grasp why they didn’t use the darn iSight as a sensor) I have to credit it as the coolest and most desirable wireless gadget in my geekdom.
